My only intention in my posting is to maybe help the next person along in their search of a lawn tractor or learn a bit about them for myself. Whether it be green, orange, blue, red or black. I don't think anyone disagrees with the fact that quality is not what it used to be, even with the advancements in technology. I wish, like most other americans out there, that we still manufactured everything here in the states. But that is a long distant memory and will probably never be again. But I bought a John Deere because the one I had before it lasted, and the farm I grew up on had plently of them that did their share of breaking, but got the job done everytime. But so did the Case, Internationals, Massey's, and I think a New Holland. Every manufacturer out there has it's share of problems. Nothings perfect! John Deere has been in my blood since childhood when I played with my first little green toy. Everytime I get on my X530, I will be proud to have one. People don't usually buy Harley Davidsons because of their quality (although I feel them to be very well built). They buy them because of the name that sits on them. If John Deere stops making a good product, the brand would eventually suffer and only be found in the history books and a few landscapes maybe. But when I drive anywhere, it is still the brand I see most often, and usually they are moving. So, drafted 72, your opinion is noted and hopefully a few people may benefit from your experience, but a GT235 and a X530 are a bit far apart in the ways they are used. I have no doubts that mine will still be alive and well in 15 years. And if I have any problems, I will be sure to post them, so the next person at least can use the info to decide if the JD brand is right for them.

Well guys, We still live in the house we bought to in 2014 in order to move Donna's aging mom who was (at that time) showing symptoms of dementia. The dementia progressively took its toll on her mind, and then in October of 2016, she was diagnosed with stage 4 bladder cancer. She lived until early February 2017 and died here at home with us, as she wished and she had made us promise not to let her die in a hospital or nursing home. She died surrounded by family and a hospice nurse was present. I only relate this story because Donna's mom's health situation was the reason we bought a house big enough for all of us to live in, under one roof.........and the subsequential multiple projects and renovations.........were the reasons I dropped off of the forum. As soon as we moved into the house, I had a long list of things that HAD to be done, and a long list of lesser things we WANTED to do......so my time on the forum just could not be justified.....I simply had too much to do. The first things to be done were to come up with safety measures to help prevent an elderly woman with dementia from injury by being proactive about preventing her from "escaping" the house. I had to equip all exit doors with a deadbolt lock keyed inside and out (all keyed alike) and we had to come up with a nearby "hiding place" close to each lock location for spare keys in case of emergency. This house has a full basement with stairs, and we did not want her mom to have access to the stairs, so I included the same deadbolt on that door too. The sliding door to the second floor deck was a challenge in that it had a key lock on the outside ONLY with just a paddle lock lever on the inside. I had to come up with a way to make that door lockable with a key from the inside. My solution was to remove the lock assembly from the door and "reverse" location of the paddle lever plate and the key tumbler plate, so that the key tumbler would be on the inside. I stripped out the guts relating to the paddle lever and covered the hole where the paddle shaft came through with a small brass plate.....heavily epoxied in place from the backside (inside the door). All you can see from outside is a small hole blanked off with brass. The deck is on the second story on the backside of the house with stairs leading down the the pool, which is enclosed inside a fence, so we never use the sliding door as a "key entry" point anyhow. Then there is the attic storage space epic adventure. The attic space when we bought the house, was almost non-existent. There was a total of 4 sheets of 4' X 8' plywood (128 sq. ft.) on the joists at the top of an extremely rickety pull down wooden stairs. Stairs were the first to go. Replaced with a sturdy aluminum pull down folding stairs. Then I hauled 22 4' X 8' sheets of 3/4 OSB into the attic space.(each sheet was cut in half lengthwise to fit through attic stairs opening). We now have about 800 sq. ft. of usable attic storage space. I built 2 inverted trusses (strong backs) to attach to the joists on the sections spanning the 12' kitchen and the 18' den. These trusses ensure that the load imposed by the extra OSB and stored material are ultimately borne by the load bearing walls at the hallway, den, and both walls of the kitchen. The addition of the trusses assures that the ceiling joists do not assume a sway back shape over time resulting in cracked ceiling gypsum board. I assembled the trusses in the attic and fabricated them to have about 1/2" "preload bow" on the 18' truss and 3/8" preload bow on the 12' truss. This was to ensure that the trusses were actually carrying some load right from the start. After I got the trusses built and fastened onto each joist they served with metal strapping, I built a 30' long, 2 tier shelf system into the truss structures. Shelves are 24" wide and the bottom shelf is 20" off the floor, while the second shelf is 46" off the floor, so you have the attic floor under the shelves, and the 2 shelves themselves for storage, That yields 180 sq. ft. of space, plus the remaining 720 or so sq. ft. of attic at various head space. The tallest overhead clearance is about 6'2" at the rafter collar ties (and I added collar ties so that every rafter has a tie, instead of every third rafter as the house was built). There were 4 rafters that had "split" open due to improper orientation by the rough carpenters. They had placed rafters with knots situated on the lower chord of the rafter (tension side), which is a no-no. These rafters had to be jacked back into place and reinforcement panels of 3/4" plywood "scabbed" onto each side, glued and screwed. The original scheme had the ventilation exhaust fans from both bathrooms simply dumping into the attic space, another no-no. I extended the exhaust hoses over to the gable area of the house and busted through the brick and installed 2 bona fide exhaust hoods with insect screens. On the longest hose, which was a 4" hose....I built a booster fan box in the middle of that run and wired it so that it turns on when the original fan turns on. I felt that a 16' run of 4" hose would probably need all the fan power it could get to keep from simply "stalling out". The other hose was 6" and only 8' long, so I felt it was adequate with no additional help needed. I could go on and on about other projects, but these were some of my most major undertakings, Now, about my employment. I no longer work as a forklift mechanic in the shop. In midsummer 2015, I took over running the parts department when our longstanding partsman retired. This was challenging in that it put me to the task of acquiring and dispensing the parts instead of installing them on vehicles. It has also been challenging in that I was the first partsman in our history to actually have the capability of searching the Volvo and Daimler websites to look up parts. It was in the summer of 2015 that the company finally got onboard with software to enable this. Prior to that advent, our method of ordering parts involve looking the parts up in hard copy paper parts manuals, or talking to a vendor/dealer on the phone and trying to describe what you wanted, it was sometimes a crap shoot whether you would get the right parts or not. The outgoing partsman never had to use the computer to look up and order parts, and when it was introduced, he refused to do it saying that his time was too short to need it, so he told me to get all the training and he would just watch. LOL He and I worked side by side for 3 months while he showed me most of the ropes before he retired in October 2015. That is a summary of what I have been up to. I know this was completely off topic, but since the request was posed here, I felt OK in responding here.

guitar hero sucks! LOL :P halo is a great choice though - I host 8-12 person halo 3 tournaments in my basement, LOL. unreal tournament 3 and street fighter 4 are fanTASTIC too. best multiplayer game by FAR is halo, though, we LOVE halo. you guys should play with me and my friends on live! consider yourselves challenged >:D you should also try elder scrolls 4: oblivion and the first fable game (we don't like to talk about the second one), too, for really gorgeous single player rpg/adventure type games. I've gotten completely immersed in these for MANY hours straight. video games were my first love, before plants; I don't play them as much as I used to but I'll never outgrow them! :P regarding that red ring - it happens to everyone, rigo. it's just known that if you buy a 360, at some point it's going to ring - it's happened to me and everyone I know at least once. it sucks, but microsoft has been really good about replacing them. I did actually fix my friend's out of warranty 360 using the penny trick - you have to open it up (requires tools and knowing exactly where the little latch type things are) and strip it all the way down, and take the board off the back plate. there are these little foam spacers that keep the board off the plate. you take two pennies and wrap them well in electrical tape, and replace each spacer with the little penny package. put it all back together again and turn it on and it usually works :) sometimes you have to do the towel trick to get it to realize it's been fixed - something about overheating it makes it reset so it doesn't think it's broken anymore. hope this helps! :P I'd fix it for you guys if I didn't live over two thousand miles away. LOL. Ria

I'm not much of a tv series watcher like I used to be. Our son tells us that we should watch The Americans, because it is very (scarily) realistic in how other hostile countries infiltrate here. Maybe. I do enjoy Big Bang Theory and am looking forward to it's spin-off, Young Sheldon. And, I'm anxiously awaiting the next season of Designated Survivor, which I love and do watch every week. Other than that, I don't watch much tv these days, except for the morning and evening news, and some HGTV (mainly Property Brothers and Fixer Upper). Right now, DH and I and rewatching the tv miniseries, John Adams, which we own. It is so incredibly well-done . . . just fantastic!